Envelope packaged goods have long since been standard items of commerce. While the goods packaged in envelopes vary considerably, traditionally, snack foods have been so packaged, and especially single serving snack foods. For example, single servings snacks such as potato chips, popcorn, corn chips, plantatin chips, fried pork rinds, and the like, are packaged in single serving envelopes, since it is intended that those single serving envelopes be displayed and dispensed at or near the place of consumption. For example, snack foods of this nature are displayed and dispensed in taverns, snack shops, convenience stores, and the like.
Since the average single serving envelope is relatively small, i.e. configured to hold about an ounce of the snack food, and since, ordinarily, a number of the envelopes are displayed at the point of purchase at any one time, the art has experienced a continued difficulty in providing apparatus for displaying and dispensing such envelop packages. In the earliest of displays, the packages were simply placed in a convenient-sized box or container but such displays never provide satisfactory since the box or container occupied considerable display space even when the box or container had only one or several packages remaining therein. Further, such display required a considerable amount of flat counter space. In view thereof, the art adopted a vertical display of such packages, which minimizes the counter space required for such display. One of the earliest vertical displays consisted of a rack with spring clips thereon. In this apparatus, each individual package was manually inserted into a spring clip for suspension and display purposes. While this approach minimizes the counter space required for display and dispensing, it entails considerable labor, since as packages are dispensed they must be manually replaced on the display. Since the ordinary profit margin in packaged snack foods is not very great, the amount of labor involved in such replenishing of the supply on the spring clip display caused considerable economic disadvantage.
One of the earliest efforts to avoid the labor involved in replenishing a spring clip type display was that of adhering the packages to a card of a size to contain a plurality of the packages. That card could be vertically disposed, e.g., on a counter, and when the supply of the packages was exhausted from that card, a like card with packages thereon could simply be substituted in its place. This considerably reduced the labor required for displaying and dispensing the packages. However, that early effort did not meet with success, since the card itself, even when nearly empty, still occupied considerable counter space and in addition was relatively unsightly when most of the packages had been removed therefrom. In addition, the adhesive used to adhere the packages to the card also adhered to the packages themselves. When the customer removed the package from the card and opened the package, the customer's fingers could easily contact the adhesive, and the adhesive on the customer's fingers made consumption of the snack food unappetizing. U.S. Pat. No. 2,361,141, is notable example of this approach to displaying and dispensing such packages. As pointed out in that 1944 patent, the adhesive being used was a gum adhesive or non-drying rubber solution adhesive.
In view of the problems associated with the packages being adhered to a card, as noted above, the art, largely, retained the spring clip display rack, even with the labor disadvantage associated therewith, until recently. For some display and dispensing purposes, suitable for some businesses, a peg board arrangement has been adopted. The peg board arrangement provides a plurality of laterally extending hangers and apertures are placed in the top of the package (above the sealing line thereof) so that the hangers may be passed through the appertures and support a plurality of packages thereon. While this approach is more economical from a labor point of view than the spring clip displays, it, nonetheless, still requires that each package be individually placed on the hangers. In addition, the peg board takes up considerable counter space (or wall space if so displayed) and suffers from yet a further disadvantage.
In this latter regard, since a single hanger may contained 5 to 10 packages, the customer removes the outermost package and when that hanger is replenished, all of the remaining packages must be removed and new packages placed behind the older packages in order to rotate the packages and avoid the contents of the packages from becoming stale. Thus, much of the labor saving achieved by the peg board and hanger arrangement, as opposed to the clip display arrangement, is lost in this necessary stock rotation.
In view of the above, another approach has been adopted in the art. This approach is similar to the approach of the display and dispensing card described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,361,141, discussed above, except that instead of an adhesive, the packages are stapled to the card. This avoids the problem of the adhesive, as discussed above, but this approach also encounters further difficulty. When a package is removed, the package must be torn from the staple. This not only requires more than desired effort on the part of the customer, but additionally leaves a ragged and torn edge on the package. That ragged and torn edge is capable of cutting the fingers of a customer but even more importantly, if the customer subsequently decides not to purchase that package, it is impossible to replace that package on the card and the torn edges of the package discourages other customers from purchasing that package. Thus, the salability of such a removed package is considerably reduced. This approach also has the difficulty that the card, like the card with the adhesive of U.S. Pat. No. 2,361,141 becomes unsightly after a number of the packages have been removed therefrom and, also, the card even with a small number of packages thereon still occupies considerable counter space. Additionally, the packages must be carefully aligned and stapled to the card, since if a staple passes through the package below the sealed line of the package the package is no longer "sealed" and will quickly deteriorate, in the case of a packaged food.
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, the art has not solved the problem of displaying and dispensing envelope packaged goods. It would therefore be of considerable advantage in the art to provide a display and dispensing apparatus where a plurality of the packages can be transported and displayed as a unit, which avoids individually handling and displaying each package as in a peg board or spring clip display, but where at the same time the packages may be dispensed without objectionable adhesive on the packages, as in the arrangement discussed above in conjunction with U.S. Pat. No. 2,351,141, or without the jagged and torn edges of the package dispensed from a staple board.